As I have said before it's simply a question of whether you want to savour the complex range of tastes and aromas in a properly brewed beer or are content with just the one you get in hop soup. You might just as well squeeze a pint out of your neighbours tom cat.

I can accept that, purely personal taste. My personal taste is that I can appreciate both. However, you originally said,

Also the the present craze for over hopped cloudy beer is because many brewers cannot produce bright naturally conditioned beer that reflect all of the the ingredients in the mash not just the hops and that includes most of the new wave "Craft Brewers",

which is entirely different and implies a lesser level of skill or results in an inferior quality product, where as the reality is a choice not to.

As I have said before it's simply a question of whether you want to savour the complex range of tastes and aromas in a properly brewed beer or are content with just the one you get in hop soup. You might just as well squeeze a pint out of your neighbours tom cat.

I can accept that, purely personal taste. My personal taste is that I can appreciate both. However, you originally said,

Also the the present craze for over hopped cloudy beer is because many brewers cannot produce bright naturally conditioned beer that reflect all of the the ingredients in the mash not just the hops and that includes most of the new wave "Craft Brewers",

which is entirely different and implies a lesser level of skill or results in an inferior quality product, where as the reality is a choice not to.

Suggest you read Eric Warner's German Wheat Beer especially the chapter on fermenting and conditioning and the lengths they go to to remove yeast and trub from the finished product. No ferment it quick and flog there. Unlike the "crafty" lets get rich quickly brewers.

"You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on." Dean Martin

I've got a Norwegian Farmhouse that's been in secondary for about a week. The recipe included quite a lot of wheat. It's going to stay in secondary until it goes bright, which may take up to two months, at cellar temperature. It'll be worth the wait, though. A nice bright beer to celebrate the end of summer or the autumn sun, if it takes that long.

Sadfield wrote:In the case of heavily dry hopped beers there is an arguement that turbidity can be beneficial as certain polyphenols such as flavanoids have antioxidant properties that aid hop aroma and flavour stability.

The current trend with NEIPA's though seems to go against this as they seem to have the most incredibly short 'drink by dates' of any beers.

Sadfield wrote:They failed.

I had their collaboration with Brooklyn, Schneider Weisse Tap 5 Meine Hopfen-Weisse, at the Berlin beer festival last week, it was pretty good but you could see floating hop matter everywhere in it:

I had their collaboration with Brooklyn, Schneider Weisse Tap 5 Meine Hopfen-Weisse, at the Berlin beer festival last week, it was pretty good but you could see floating hop matter everywhere in it:

Bonus, must count as one of your five a day then.

On a serious point though, if you were to want to brew something with a shed load of late and dry hops, wheat and oats, which is best drunk young just how are you meant to get it crystal clear?
Other than chucking a load of finings at it that is, which I wouldn't really call skillful brewing and in my experience even fined dry hopped beers don't end up crystal clear.

In or near Norwich? Interested in meeting up monthly to talk and drink beer? PM me for details.

I had their collaboration with Brooklyn, Schneider Weisse Tap 5 Meine Hopfen-Weisse, at the Berlin beer festival last week, it was pretty good but you could see floating hop matter everywhere in it:

Bonus, must count as one of your five a day then.

On a serious point though, if you were to want to brew something with a shed load of late and dry hops, wheat and oats, which is best drunk young just how are you meant to get it crystal clear?
Other than chucking a load of finings at it that is, which I wouldn't really call skillful brewing and in my experience even fined dry hopped beers don't end up crystal clear.

No Keith, I very much agree with what you say on that. However, I wonder what the result might be if those making such beers did (or maybe were able) from the start all one can and does to make good beer? Could it be the muddy look is the fashion that gets it sold for the price that has to be charged for such hop content?

So far my attempts few at such beers have not produced anything similar to a scaled down version of a glass sided working cesspit and wonder what I might be doing something wrong. Haze is one problem, mud is another.
Getting home from a sunny day in Wensleydale this evening I poured a beer with hop cones in the cask to find a couple of petals had found their way into the glass. Is theirs the result of using all pellet hops? Something doesn't ring true in this from my own experience.

Without patience, life becomes difficult and the sooner it's finished, the better.

Eric wrote:Could it be the muddy look is the fashion that gets it sold for the price that has to be charged for such hop content?

Doesn't make sense as a business plan though, given the ease at which people dismiss beer on lack of clarity. Plus it would require some agreement from many breweries on both sides of the Atlantic to impliment such a strategy.

The reality is, as many professional and amateur brewers are finding, NEIPA is a difficult style to master. If anything there is currently a lot of experimentation going on and the science is playing catch up, due to unconventional grists, water treatment, yeast selection, multi-strain pitching and different hopping techniques. Whilst it may still turn out a fad, there is some creative and cutting edge (possibly an overstatement) brewing being done. There is also a difference between muddy, turbid, opaque and hazy, with good examples leaning towards the latter two.

Eric. I'm with you there, I use the same process whatever type of beer I make (up to fining on kegging, I'm not sold on that) and when I see people adding flour and the like to intentionally get a cloudy beer I do wonder why.
IMHO if you adhere to best practice and the beer tastes good but isn't bright well that's just how it should be, intentionally making a beer cloudy to jump on a bandwagon is marketing bullshit.
However saying a beer can't be good because it's not bright.. well let's just accept we all don't like the same thing.

In or near Norwich? Interested in meeting up monthly to talk and drink beer? PM me for details.

Keith1664 you may wish to read the article I posted which pretty much debunks the adding flour for haze myth. I really don't think haze was ever the intention or a concern, more a byproduct of processes in search of new flavours.

I did read it after I posted, however when I'd seen adding flour mentioned before it was in the context of intentionally adding murk, why?
I've no problem with a style not being clear but fail to understand why you'd make it murky on purpose, unless bandwagon jumping.

However if it doesn't work then it proves you can't believe everything you read on the internet, now there's a shock.

In or near Norwich? Interested in meeting up monthly to talk and drink beer? PM me for details.

The reality is, as many professional and amateur brewers are finding, NEIPA is a difficult style to master.
What's difficult about brewing a beer? Why look for trouble or read to then believe all variations of blogs written frequently by those knowing no better? What can be so wrong about doing what is known good historical practise, avoiding what isn't except for when you intend to trial to determine the influence of a single variant?

If anything there is currently a lot of experimentation going on and the science is playing catch up,
There is indeed, perhaps mostly by non-scientific amateurs without accessing the last 150 years of scientific research who then go on some ego trip writting a blog load of rubbish.

due to unconventional grists,
Surely that's not a new problem? An example. In 1942 or 43 it was thought Britain wouldn't have sufficient barley to feed the nation's population and make enough beer, so trialled beers using alternatives. They were successful making a good tasting perfectly clear beer with 40% oats, although it didn't prove to be necessary. Barley doesn't grow well in Africa, so there use sorgum making beer which can be bought all around the world and it's possible you've drank it without even knowing. Americans have practised separate cereal mashing since prohibition, if not before. This isn't new, it's probably been the greatest variable in the entire history of brewing and I'm sure some procedures long since known to be futile have been recently claimed to be a new way forward. Beer isn't unique in this regard.

water treatment,
Until mastering water treatment my beers didn't match many on offer in decent pubs. Water treatment is easier to learn than that of riding a bike and many similar hurdles life has. Get your water tested, learn the facts, cut out the crap and do it. Don't just talk about it as if it was impossible as some, seemingly for personal interests, would have people believe.

yeast selection,
Yes, a potential minefield as I have found. In a hurry grabbing an East Coast yeast some years ago thinking it was East Anglian to find it wasn't and denuded virtually all flavour from an extravagant and exotic malt bill. I've been a lot more cautious since and this is the first year I've spent money on yeast for probably 4. I've 5 or 6 live strains in the fridge at the moment, a little above the practical level in my world.

multi-strain pitching
Did this recently after putting a yeast into a wrong container when regenerating my stock. From the resulting beer, one strain would seem to have been dominant. This was but proof of the greatness of the hobby, not an obstruction or difficulty, just one of the steps that can be taken. It's an extra string to a bow should it be wished. Yeast can easily be treated by brewers like good breeders of dogs and birds who won't keep those that don't perform as wanted.

and different hopping techniques.
What is difficult or scientific about this? I look at my stock to choose what might be most suitable, weigh them, decide when to pitch, do it and log it. My findings get logged when drinking the beer. This is part of my hobby and it would likely be duller if it wasn't. I cannot see it as an obstacle to producing good beer.

Whilst it may still turn out a fad, there is some creative and cutting edge (possibly an overstatement) brewing being done. There is also a difference between muddy, turbid, opaque and hazy, with good examples leaning towards the latter two.
This is where I think our opinions differ most and might instead have written .............

There is also a difference between muddy, turbid, opaque and hazy, with poor brewing practises leaning towards the former.

Each to his own.

Without patience, life becomes difficult and the sooner it's finished, the better.

Are you assuming that all craft brewers are not well read, unqualified and have no experience outside their own breweries?

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I don’t think anyone who is as knowledgeable about beer and brewing as Eric and IPA are ‘assuming’ anything. The proof is too often in the crafty beverages, clearly. Therefore ‘assuming’ is actually a rude phrase here. Brewing is a serious science, ‘craft brewing’ isn’t. Home brewers have the choice. The serious scientists in the (big) brewing industry could turn on the ‘craft’ taps any time they liked. Personally, I think they could do a better job. They won’t for a while, though, because ‘craft’ is a tiny segment of the market. With their buying power, they could bring down the price of over-hopped ‘beers’ very significantly. There’s no market for it, though. Just a backwater for paddling ‘revolutionaries’ harking on about the virtues of hops, to the point where it becomes astringent, even painful, to drink. I’m sure I could pitch a bottle or two of that crap as ‘late hops' into a secondary. There’s a fundamental reason why trying to reinvent beer won’t work as a sustainable model. And I can almost hear the Fuggles giggling confidently in my freezer. Like the wheel, beer was pretty much perfected a long time ago. It doesn’t need reinventing. However, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have some fun brewing whatever makes you happy